Past Is Prologue for Vote in Nicaragua

By LARRY ROHTER

Published: September 1, 1996

TIPITAPA, Nicaragua, Aug. 30—
The candidate had finally arrived at the campaign rally here, and an announcer was preparing the crowd for his speech. With a 10-point lead in the polls and the presidential election less than two months away, the supporters of Arnoldo Aleman were feeling supremely confident about their man's chances.

''When will the Sandinistas return to power?'' the announcer asked them over and over.

''Never!'' the crowd shouted back each time, waving the red-and-white banners of Mr. Aleman's rightist Liberal Alliance.

It has been more than six years since Nicaraguans brought an abrupt end to the Sandinista revolution by voting Daniel Ortega Saavedra out of office. But with Mr. Ortega once again the candidate of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, in the vote to be held on Oct. 20, the campaign is as much about Nicaragua's bitter, violent past as about its uncertain future.

Promising ''change without violence'' as he campaigns in every remote corner of the country, Mr. Aleman, 50, a former Mayor of Managua, has been reminding voters of the days not long ago when young men were being rounded up for military service in an unpopular war and Nicaraguans had to stand ''in long lines just to receive a pound of rice or sugar.''

''This past cannot return,'' he told the crowd in this market town east of the capital, ''and neither can those who were responsible for that dark night. This is a people that forgives, but does not forget.''

Thus far, that approach appears to be working. Though more than a score of political parties have candidates in the race to succeed President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the surprise winner in February 1990, most polls show Mr. Aleman hovering around 40 percent of the vote, followed by Mr. Ortega, with about 30 percent.

''To the extent that Aleman can portray this election as a reminder of what the 80's were like, he's got a winning hand,'' said one diplomat here. ''The best thing he can do is draw a comparison between himself and the bad old days.''

Mr. Ortega, in contrast, has sought to portray himself as an agent of conciliation and to depict Mr. Aleman as an extremist nostalgic for the Somoza family dictatorship that preceded the Sandinista revolution of 1979. He regularly describes his opponent as the candidate of ''the Liberal-Somoza alliance'' and accuses him of having ''an agenda of confrontation and revenge.''

In an effort to establish his own credentials as a moderate, Mr. Ortega has named as his running mate Juan Manuel Caldera, a rancher who not only is not a member of the Sandinista Front but whose holdings were confiscated in the 1980's. And Mr. Ortega has pledged to follow market economics if elected. He has also made a point of saying he seeks a good relationship with the United States.

In an interview, Mr. Ortega said Mr. Aleman was ''playing on people's fears'' that a Sandinista victory would lead to a cutoff of American aid and another round of diplomatic confrontation. But he added, ''I am totally convinced that the American position today and tomorrow, whether it is Clinton or Dole who wins the election there, will be very different from Reagan.''

One of Mr. Ortega's glossy television commercials, which use the slogan ''A Government for All,'' even shows him shaking hands with a former contra, one of the anti-Sandinista rebels whose war against Mr. Ortega's Government was financed by the United States when Ronald Reagan was President.

But those efforts have been undercut by a recent interview in a Venezuelan newspaper quoting Tomas Borge, a founder of the Sandinista Front and a former Interior Minister, as saying that if Mr. Aleman wins, Mr. Borge will grab his rifle and knapsack and ''go back to the mountains'' as a guerrilla.

Mr. Borge has denied making the statement, and Mr. Ortega described it as ''part of a campaign of disinformation'' directed by the right. But the political impact has been damaging.

''The Sandinistas are a bunch of bandits who only know how to kill the poor,'' Enrique Reyes, a 41-year-old bus driver, said with disgust. ''Every previous Government in this country has been a failure, and our noble Aleman is the only one who can get us out of this crisis.''

The polarization may be due in part to the elimination of candidates who said they were offering a more centrist alternative. Five have been disqualified by the Supreme Electoral Council on technical grounds, including Mrs. Chamorro's son-in-law, Antonio Lacayo, and Eden Pastora, the former Sandinista leader whose nom de guerre was Commander Zero.

Constitutional changes adopted last year bar an incumbent President from seeking re-election or being succeeded by a close relative.

To avoid a runoff, a candidate must win the first round with at least 45 percent of the votes cast, which would seem to favor Mr. Aleman. A date for a second round, should one be necessary, has not been set, but Mrs. Chamorro's successor is scheduled to be sworn in on Jan. 10, 1997, along with hundreds of members of Congress, mayors and city council members who will also be elected in October.

Since neither Mrs. Chamorro nor Mr. Lacayo is in the running, there have been few complaints that the Government is favoring one candidate over another, an issue often raised when Mr. Ortega was seeking re-election in 1990. Nevertheless, the campaign has been plagued by organizational problems.

The Government, for instance, missed a deadline for giving campaign money to candidates. That led smaller parties to complain of discrimination against them and to demand that the vote be put off. Both the Government and Miguel Cardinal Obando y Bravo, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Managua, condemned that notion as damaging to the credibility of any vote.

Distribution of voter registration documents is also moving slowly, generating concern that not all of the 2.3 million eligible voters age 16 or older will be able to cast ballots.

Though the tensions that marked the 1990 vote are largely absent, there have been sporadic security problems. One of Mr. Aleman's bodyguards was killed in an ambush of his campaign caravan early this year, and when the Sandinistas more recently tried to open an office in Miami, where 125,000 Nicaraguans live, bomb threats and vandalism soon led to its closing.

''The political culture here is still quite difficult,'' Mr. Aleman said in an interview. ''Everyone wants to be the boss, but the reality is that there are still only two forces in this country that are relevant.''

Photos: On the stump, the former President Daniel Ortega Saavedra is positioning himself as a moderate this time and embracing market economics. (Associated Press); Arnoldo Aleman, the Nicaraguan presidential candidate for the rightist Liberal Alliance, at a rally in Tipitapa. Mr. Aleman, who holds a 10-point lead in the polls, reminds voters of hardships during the country's civil war. (Anita Baca for The New York Times) Map of Nicaragua showing the location of Tipitapa.